96 Union Bay 



and coke. Some still contained the corks and floated high. 

 Others, uncorked, had shipped water so that often only the 

 necks were above water. I saw them in almost every con- 

 ceivable location: in small hidden inlets which could have 

 been reached only by a series of varying winds, each of 

 which pushed them to a turn where they remained until a 

 wind from another quarter would carry them a little farther. 



They rested on the flats where the shorebirds congregated, 

 on logs where high water had left them stranded, and some- 

 times in the forked branches of some low hanging willow. I 

 assumed they came from the boats which constantly moved 

 through the canal, for there was almost no picnicking along 

 the shores, and I had seen some bottles tossed from passing 

 ships. Also I noticed that they were more plentiful after 

 holidays when many boats had left their moorings, a time 

 when the marsh shores were deserted because everybody was 

 taking longer trips. 



As I made my rounds and looked at the collection, I won- 

 dered if a report of their numbers and kinds would have any 

 value for statistical purposes, and whether a weekly count 

 would be any sort of index to total consumption in such 

 fields. For so many boats, so many bottles of this, that, and 

 the other. I marveled at the total absence of wine bottles. 

 Were yachtsmen of so sturdy a breed that they scorned the 

 less potent wine? Or was its absence explainable by some 

 other factor? Would it pay the vintners to check closely this 

 ominous situation? Perhaps this local sampling of taste might 

 be accurate enough to use as a substitute for an expensive 

 general survey. 



It must be understood that my interest in bottles was not 

 because I personally was concerned with such figures but 

 because their presence in the marsh was often a source of 

 great annoyance to me. I would find a subject which I par- 

 ticularly wanted to photograph in its natural surroundings. 

 But how could the surroundings be considered natural when, 



